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I have several problems with this article. First, I don't see why it is on Hacker News. Second, the article seems to argue that the media should not be object

I have several problems with this article. First, I don't see why it is on Hacker News. Second, the article seems to argue that the media should not be objective, but should take sides. One doesn't have to be a reader of "The Nation" and "National Review", as I am, to know that there is a full range of ideological media out there taking all sides of every issue. Finally, it is ironic to be lectured by an Arab news organization criticizing our democracy.

rjtavares 13y ago
Attacking the organization that posted the opinion piece for being Arabic while ignoring the author is an experienced american journalist? I'm pretty sure there are a couple of logical fallacies there... -- Dan Froomkin @froomkin Dan Froomkin is launching the Center for Accountability Journalism, at FearlessMedia.org. He has worked as senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post, as White House Watch columnist for the Washington Post; and as editor of the Washington Post website. Email him at froomkin@gmail.com. EDIT: Arab, not Arabic. I apologize for the confusion.
- DrJokepu 13y ago
  Minor (and off-topic) nitpick: An organization, a person, etc. is Arab, not Arabic. But Arab people often speak Arabic, which means the language.
  - rjtavares 13y ago
    Thanks for the correction! I'm not a native speaker, and there is no such difference in my language.
  - icambron 13y ago
    Counter-nitpick: A newspaper can be Arabic in that it's chiefly in Arabic; i.e. Arabic is also an adjective for describing things relating to the language. "Arab" is an ethnicity and an adjectival and demonym for a region. Arabic publications may or may not be Arab, and vice-versa. But a newspaper can certainly be Arabic. Some of the confusion might be that we rarely use "English" to describe things that are in English when it might be ambiguous whether we mean the language or the place/people. So we say "English-language newspaper" to mean something different than "a newspaper published in England". But with Arab/Arabic, we have two words, so it's not a problem. Of course, Al Jazeera is also Arab (in the region sense, not necessarily the ethnic sense-- different ambiguity); I'm just saying that to the extent that it's in Arabic, it can be called Arabic. I should note that I'm not actually an expert in any of the relevant fields here and I'd love to hear someone take that apart.
Udo 13y ago
I agree that this doesn't belong on HN. However, you're wrong about AlJazeera, they're actually a pretty good news company (and there are not that many great ones left). They also have a big contingent of quality english-speaking journalists.
- joshuaheard 13y ago
  I read AlJazeera from time to time and find it mostly contains Arab propaganda. I have no idea what nationality Dan Froomkin is. The Arab network, AlJazeera, has editorial discretion to publish pieces. And in so doing, sends a message to its readers. Since the majority of Arab countries are autocratic, it is ironic to have the Arab media criticize America's democracy by selecting such articles to publish.
  - chunkyslink 13y ago
    I have a childhood friend who works on the news desk for the AlJazeera 24 hour news. He edits the footage shown across the world. He is allowed to decide what is shown and has told me he has less restrictions than working for many American news companies (which he has done in the past) Get your facts straight and open your eyes. >I read AlJazeera from time to time and find it mostly contains Arab propaganda Do you say this because they disagree with your American imperialist views?
  - pavs 13y ago
    Speaking of propaganda, I would rather watch Al-Jazeera over any USA news channel any day of the week.
  - chunkyslink 13y ago
    > I have no idea what nationality Dan Froomkin is Looks like he's American raised in Washingotn DC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Froomkin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Froomkin And your point is?
  - Udo 13y ago
    Wow. As an atheist who believes a lot of evil in the world comes from the big religions (mainly Islam and Christianity), I'm pretty much allergic to "Arab propaganda" as you call it. For the most part, AlJazeera has better journalistic standards than most American news outlets. They're an international news organization, actually. And anyone should have the right to criticize a democracy as long as they have a valid point. By the way, whatever happens in the US has a nasty tendency to affect everyone globally sooner or later.
alan_cx 13y ago
Do you object to so called democracies criticising Arab states? Are you suggesting that only a democracies can can have a say, and Arabs should just shut up and do as told? Hmmmm, no wonder they have problem with the West.
- joshuaheard 13y ago
  No, and no. Unlike most Arab countries, we have freedom of speech.
mayanksinghal 13y ago
> Finally, it is ironic to be lectured by an Arab news organization criticizing our democracy. No it isn't. US media doesn't own an exclusive right to comment on affairs of other nation states. Given the status of US economy in the world, what happens in US affects other nations more than what happens there affects US. They have every reason to report this. And journalism is more than just dumping facts. Though, a journalist's idealogical bias should affect the correctness of the article, his experienced analysis is usually necessary for most readers to understand the gist of the situation who are most likely to be unaware of the law/politics/technology behind the incident.
noonespecial 13y ago
Al Jazeera has actually been doing a pretty good job of covering this mess. Better than MSNBC in my opinion.
wmacmil 13y ago
As the OP, I believe this post is consistent with the hacker news guidelines. As it states in the welcoming: Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads. It later defines deeply interesting as 'stuff that teaches you about the world.' I would by no means consider this a crap, or superficial article. I don't consider your comment necessarily rude or dumb; however, I do consider it misinformed. The article does not posit the media should be subjective: it is rather objective in stating that the media is failing to state the reality of the situation. Another key example of comparative value is global warming. The global warming debate taking place in the media is almost universally framed as a democrats vs. republicans, liberal conservative debate. It is not. The politicians getting quoted on mainstream news sources are not the experts qualified to be making statements regarding the human induced global warming debate. They are not actively publishing, and doubtfully reading the scientific literature published in dozens, if not hundreds of journals which nearly unanimously acknowledge that there is a high probability of humans having a noticeable impact on climate change. Yet, the scientists denying human induced global warming nearly all have either direct ties with or strong affiliations of companies and people whose interest is to fight global warming for economic gain. This article essentially mirrors that same argument except replacing scientists, you may essentially think of the objective viewpoint having to do with constitution and law, not political divides.
rlx0x 13y ago
[I was just about to write something defending one of the last remaining journalistic institutions of the world (Al Jazeera) but then thought about the drone murders, the NSA totalitarian surveillance of the world and the US military industrial complex, and that "The mainstream press really has such a difficult time trying to cope with asymmetry between the two parties' agendas and connections to facts and truth." so I thought better of it...] I agree with you 100%, how dare they criticize the US media, the US is the only true democracy of the world! [Next time I will skip the first and this paragraph, its becoming too dangerous, I have a growing fear of the US and its brainwashed citizens]

rjtavares 13y ago

Attacking the organization that posted the opinion piece for being Arabic while ignoring the author is an experienced american journalist? I'm pretty sure there are a couple of logical fallacies there... -- Dan Froomkin @froomkin Dan Froomkin is launching the Center for Accountability Journalism, at FearlessMedia.org. He has worked as senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post, as White House Watch columnist for the Washington Post; and as editor of the Washington Post website. Email him at froomkin@gmail.com. EDIT: Arab, not Arabic. I apologize for the confusion.

DrJokepu 13y ago
Minor (and off-topic) nitpick: An organization, a person, etc. is Arab, not Arabic. But Arab people often speak Arabic, which means the language.
- rjtavares 13y ago
  Thanks for the correction! I'm not a native speaker, and there is no such difference in my language.
- icambron 13y ago
  Counter-nitpick: A newspaper can be Arabic in that it's chiefly in Arabic; i.e. Arabic is also an adjective for describing things relating to the language. "Arab" is an ethnicity and an adjectival and demonym for a region. Arabic publications may or may not be Arab, and vice-versa. But a newspaper can certainly be Arabic. Some of the confusion might be that we rarely use "English" to describe things that are in English when it might be ambiguous whether we mean the language or the place/people. So we say "English-language newspaper" to mean something different than "a newspaper published in England". But with Arab/Arabic, we have two words, so it's not a problem. Of course, Al Jazeera is also Arab (in the region sense, not necessarily the ethnic sense-- different ambiguity); I'm just saying that to the extent that it's in Arabic, it can be called Arabic. I should note that I'm not actually an expert in any of the relevant fields here and I'd love to hear someone take that apart.

Udo 13y ago

I agree that this doesn't belong on HN. However, you're wrong about AlJazeera, they're actually a pretty good news company (and there are not that many great ones left). They also have a big contingent of quality english-speaking journalists.

joshuaheard 13y ago
I read AlJazeera from time to time and find it mostly contains Arab propaganda. I have no idea what nationality Dan Froomkin is. The Arab network, AlJazeera, has editorial discretion to publish pieces. And in so doing, sends a message to its readers. Since the majority of Arab countries are autocratic, it is ironic to have the Arab media criticize America's democracy by selecting such articles to publish.
- chunkyslink 13y ago
  I have a childhood friend who works on the news desk for the AlJazeera 24 hour news. He edits the footage shown across the world. He is allowed to decide what is shown and has told me he has less restrictions than working for many American news companies (which he has done in the past) Get your facts straight and open your eyes. >I read AlJazeera from time to time and find it mostly contains Arab propaganda Do you say this because they disagree with your American imperialist views?
- pavs 13y ago
  Speaking of propaganda, I would rather watch Al-Jazeera over any USA news channel any day of the week.
- chunkyslink 13y ago
  > I have no idea what nationality Dan Froomkin is Looks like he's American raised in Washingotn DC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Froomkin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Froomkin And your point is?
- Udo 13y ago
  Wow. As an atheist who believes a lot of evil in the world comes from the big religions (mainly Islam and Christianity), I'm pretty much allergic to "Arab propaganda" as you call it. For the most part, AlJazeera has better journalistic standards than most American news outlets. They're an international news organization, actually. And anyone should have the right to criticize a democracy as long as they have a valid point. By the way, whatever happens in the US has a nasty tendency to affect everyone globally sooner or later.

alan_cx 13y ago

Do you object to so called democracies criticising Arab states? Are you suggesting that only a democracies can can have a say, and Arabs should just shut up and do as told? Hmmmm, no wonder they have problem with the West.

joshuaheard 13y ago
No, and no. Unlike most Arab countries, we have freedom of speech.

mayanksinghal 13y ago

> Finally, it is ironic to be lectured by an Arab news organization criticizing our democracy. No it isn't. US media doesn't own an exclusive right to comment on affairs of other nation states. Given the status of US economy in the world, what happens in US affects other nations more than what happens there affects US. They have every reason to report this. And journalism is more than just dumping facts. Though, a journalist's idealogical bias should affect the correctness of the article, his experienced analysis is usually necessary for most readers to understand the gist of the situation who are most likely to be unaware of the law/politics/technology behind the incident.

noonespecial 13y ago

Al Jazeera has actually been doing a pretty good job of covering this mess. Better than MSNBC in my opinion.

wmacmil 13y ago

As the OP, I believe this post is consistent with the hacker news guidelines. As it states in the welcoming: Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads. It later defines deeply interesting as 'stuff that teaches you about the world.' I would by no means consider this a crap, or superficial article. I don't consider your comment necessarily rude or dumb; however, I do consider it misinformed. The article does not posit the media should be subjective: it is rather objective in stating that the media is failing to state the reality of the situation. Another key example of comparative value is global warming. The global warming debate taking place in the media is almost universally framed as a democrats vs. republicans, liberal conservative debate. It is not. The politicians getting quoted on mainstream news sources are not the experts qualified to be making statements regarding the human induced global warming debate. They are not actively publishing, and doubtfully reading the scientific literature published in dozens, if not hundreds of journals which nearly unanimously acknowledge that there is a high probability of humans having a noticeable impact on climate change. Yet, the scientists denying human induced global warming nearly all have either direct ties with or strong affiliations of companies and people whose interest is to fight global warming for economic gain. This article essentially mirrors that same argument except replacing scientists, you may essentially think of the objective viewpoint having to do with constitution and law, not political divides.

rlx0x 13y ago

[I was just about to write something defending one of the last remaining journalistic institutions of the world (Al Jazeera) but then thought about the drone murders, the NSA totalitarian surveillance of the world and the US military industrial complex, and that "The mainstream press really has such a difficult time trying to cope with asymmetry between the two parties' agendas and connections to facts and truth." so I thought better of it...] I agree with you 100%, how dare they criticize the US media, the US is the only true democracy of the world! [Next time I will skip the first and this paragraph, its becoming too dangerous, I have a growing fear of the US and its brainwashed citizens]